Not long ago, I paid my first visit to the Los Angeles-based Eli Broad Family Foundation collection, which, according to its handsome brochure, aims “to serve as a resource to foster the serious study and public under standing of contemporary art.” Begun about a decade ago, the still-growing collection now numbers some three hundred works by more than seventy-five artists; about 20 per cent of it is on view at any given time, in a wonderful, most un-California-like building—a former telephone switching station—a block from the ocean in Santa Monica. It can be visited, by appointment, by “museum professionals, students, art writers, scholars and qualified museum groups.” (What about artists? you will ask.) The rest of the collec tion is on long- or short-term loan to muse ums, universities, and the like, for the founda tion was conceived as a “lending library,” lessening demands on limited institutional acquisition funds and storage space.

So far, so good. It’s not entirely altruistic, of course, since the museum loans confer in stant provenance on works in the collection and help to protect high-priced fashionable art from losing its value, but there are worse things in the art world these days. If you’re wondering why museum curators wouldn’t prefer to bypass the Broad Foundation and select their own shows, they probably would, but private collectors are increasingly reluc tant to part with (expensive) work. The problem is that the collection all too ac curately reflects the “official,” dominant taste of its time.